Altobridge Remote Community Solution Shortlisted for Two Prestigious Industry Awards

IET and AfricaCom shortlistings recognise global and regional importance of the Altobridge Remote Community Solution

Kerry Technology Park, Ireland, 13 October 2009 – Leading provider of cost-effective wireless solutions, Altobridge, has been shortlisted for two prestigious industry awards in recognition of its Remote Community Solution. This technology makes a powerful contribution to emerging market mobile network operators, enabling them to roll out profitable cellular services to small, remote user groups.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), has selected Altobridge as a finalist from 400 entries for its: Remote Community Solution – Delivering Cost-Effective Hybrid Satcom/Cellular Communications Solutions to Isolated Communities, in the Telecommunications category of the IET Innovation Awards 2009. The winners will be announced on 25 November at a gala dinner to be held in London at Lord’s Cricket Ground.

The IET is one of the world’s leading professional societies for the engineering and technology community and has more than 150,000 members in 127 countries. It provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of ideas and promote the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world.

In the second shortlisting, the Altobridge Remote Community Solution has again been selected as a finalist in the ‘Best Cost Efficiency Solution for Africa’ category of the 2009 AfricaCom Awards. The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony held in Cape Town on 11 November where 500 industry leaders will attend to celebrate the biggest achievers in the African telecoms industry. The Awards, in their second year, are organised by Informa Telecoms & Media as part of its Com World Series. It received a record 88 entries this year, of which 13 were in the Best Cost-Efficiency Solution category. This is the 12th AfricaCom Conference with over 3,500 telecoms participants.

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Notes for editors

For further information about the two awards mentioned in this news release and the organizations behind them, visit: www.theiet.org and www.comworldseries.com.

About the Altobridge Remote Community Solution
The Altobridge Remote Community solution combines two of the company’s breakthrough technologies, Local Connectivity and its Split-BSC Architecture, together with a cost-effective remote base station. As a result, mobile network operators can benefit from the most operationally efficient communications solution for remote communities available today.

The Remote Community solution delivers cost-effective wireless services for communities with 50 to 500 subscribers in remote or hard-to-reach areas. It provides operators with the opportunity to switch locally in any network scenario, and the technology reduces the backhaul cost to levels below that of sites in the macro network. The core of the Remote Community solution is the Split-BSC. In simple terms, the part of the BSC handling Radio Resource Management and all other communication with the BTS and the mobiles, has been moved out to the BTS site, while the part handling communication with the MSC/Media Gateway, is kept centrally. This split allows the BSC to manage the BTS and mobiles, without any signaling going back and forth over the backhaul link.

As the Split-BSC resides on either side of the satellite backhaul link, it is in full control of how and what is transferred over the link. In addition to just optimising the payload, by removing padding and silent frames, Altobridge’s Split-BSC transcodes the signal. The transcoded signal requires 5-8 kbit/s per active voice channel, compared to 17-25 kbit/s required by competing solutions. In many areas of the world, the difference represents 4-5 US cents per minute, effectively an operator’s entire profit margin. Add to that the idle load and it becomes clear that Altobridge’s Remote Community solution is ideal for addressing small remote communities, profitably.

To further improve both business case and user experience the Remote Community solution includes Altobridge’s Local Connectivity technology, which handles all local calls locally. The company’s patented Local Connectivity functionality is unique in that call control, charging, supplementary service management and O&M remains in the control of the MSC. The transparency ensures that the investment in optimising the central core network and service layer is protected and no expensive and complex distributed architecture is introduced. As Local Connectivity eliminates double satellite hops for local calls, users will also experience improved network quality. This usually leads to longer call holding times and, therefore, higher call revenues.

About Altobridge – www.altobridge.com
Headquartered at Kerry Technology Park, Ireland and with regional offices in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, USA and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Altobridge is a leading provider of telecommunications solutions that cut the cost of communications to, from and between wireless devices.

The Altobridge patented Split Architecture and Local Connectivity platforms, which are combined within the Remote Community Solution, cut backhaul costs to and from base station sites as well as providing local call switching. These solutions have been successfully tested and deployed across the world’s wireless telecommunications networks as well as in the following vertical markets: Remote Community/Enterprise, Aeronautical, Maritime, Secure and Emergency/First Responder wireless communication.

Altobridge licenses its software to the world leading wireless telecommunications vendors and can also provide fully managed services to Mobile Network Operators. Wireless operator clients include: Maxis in Malaysia (Remote Community), Mobicom in Mongolia (Remote Community), AeroMobile (Aeronautical GSM), Blue Ocean Wireless (Maritime GSM). Vendor clients include: Ericsson (Local Connectivity).

Issued by the Corporate Communications Department of Altobridge Limited.
For further information, contact:
Linda Hickey
Marketing & Communications Director
Altobridge Ltd
Kerry Technology Park
Tralee, Co. Kerry, Ireland
Tel: +353 66 719 0210
Fax: +353 66 719 0022
Email: info {at} altobridge(.)com

For Media and Analyst Relations enquiries:
Tim Guest
Altobridge Corporate Communications at
Global Media & Analyst Relations
London, UK
M: +44 7956 257069
Email: tguest {at} altobridge(.)com or timjguest {at} btconnect(.)com